


Oil on Canvas

by flitwickslittlebrotha



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Fantasy, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Open to interpretation:, Or More Like, Reincarnation, Somethings to Lovers, Soulmates, Very open to interpretation read into it what you will
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2020-06-30
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:41:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24990955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flitwickslittlebrotha/pseuds/flitwickslittlebrotha
Summary: "That’s the beauty of museums, Grantaire thought. Life persists."Grantaire works the night shift at the museum, where he passes the quiet hours getting to know one of its more curious figures. He calls him Apollo, and he soon learns there is more depth to the man than anyone could imagine.A fic based on one of my most favorite works of fanart in the whole wide world: https://bit.ly/3gelDZ5
Relationships: Enjolras/Grantaire (Les Misérables)
Comments: 17
Kudos: 120





	Oil on Canvas

**Author's Note:**

> For accessibility, it is not necessary to be familiar with any of the artworks alluded to in this fic. The only painter mentioned by name who actually existed is Jacques-Louis David (pronounced duh-VEED).

_Apollo_

_Workshop of Jacques-Louis David, 1815_

_This work has been attributed to an unknown artist in the workshop of Jacques-Louis David, although it is possible more than one artist painted it. Originally found at David’s estate upon the artist’s death, the painting was untitled and unsigned. However, the drapery on the figure and the Doric column in the background suggest a scene from ancient Greece, and the symbols of the laurel wreath and lyre have led scholars to identify the figure as Apollo. Most recognized as the god of the sun, Apollo has also played a significant role in art history as a homoerotic muse, due to his idealized beauty and lithe boyishness._

_Oil on Cavnas_

On the main floor of the museum, behind the ticketing desk and in front of the gallery entrance, is a grandfather clock. It’s a magnificent thing – 16th century, walnut body with gold accents, a towering nine feet tall. The gears were rusted when the museum bought it, but after a short stay in the conservation room it’s been up and running, finding its new home in the lobby. At every hour a deep chime rumbles out from its hollow body, so deep you can feel it in your bones. Apparently, visitors to the museum delight in the sound, pausing in their artistic appraisals to smile as the chime resonates through the galleries.

Grantaire had never been to the museum during open hours, so he wouldn’t know.

What he was very familiar with, rather, were the melodies that would ring out on the 12 o’clock and 6 o’clock hours. These were no ordinary chimes. No, those hours brought forth a cacophony of sound, notes engineered by a clockmaker long dead but full of life themselves. The deep rumble was still there, but above it a melodic twirl of high notes harmonized with a third lilting strain. The chime wasn’t quite _beautiful_ per se, but there was beauty in it, Grantaire was sure. Beauty and sadness, he thought.

The first chime marked one hour into his graveyard shift, the second chime one hour until the freedom of daybreak and the promise of his pillow. He had just passed the two-year anniversary of working the night shift at the museum, and his body had become well-adjusted to the reverse schedule he now lived by.

On most days he’d get up around five or six in the evening and head to the bar. He’d wolf down a breakfast of nachos or fries as his friends would chat with him over their beers. On the mornings he found himself hungover, he’d indulge in a beer or two as well, preferring the buzz to a headache. Then he’d wander the city for an hour or so, maybe catch a movie if the runtime was short enough, before clocking into work at 11pm. There was one other night guard who shared his shift, a kid who had only started a few months ago after the last guy retired. He was still getting used to the nocturnal schedule, and Grantaire mostly let him doze off at the security desk while he made his rounds. Sometime after the 6 o’clock chimes rang, the two of them would make a final complete sweep, making sure there were no mice or leaking air conditioners in any of the museum’s hundred galleries. The daytime staff would arrive at 7, and Grantaire would take off, heading back home. He had a habit of swapping lunch for a deluge of snacks, so dinner would usually be something light as he ended his night reading the morning paper. Sweet unconsciousness would take him around 9 or 10, and then he’d start it all over the following day.

It was an easy life, and it was a blessedly monotonous schedule six days a week. He’d always been a mess of a person, so the certainty of his days and the quiet hours at work had been a welcome path to reform, and he was almost a fully-functioning person by now.

Almost.

He _was_ chugging from a bottom-shelf can of beer as he traced familiar steps through the museum.

Just then, the midnight chimes rang out tried and true. He’d been up since four that day, since an old friend was in town and had wanted to meet him for happy hour. He’d skipped the drinks then, so this current indulgence was like his own happy hour, a little “afternoon” treat. Except, of course, for the fact that he was at work and had promised his mother he’d try to get sober.

No matter. Grantaire took a refreshing sip as the chimes echoed through the empty museum. They were haunting, almost magical, but more importantly: they were loud. Loud enough to reach Gallery 65 on the third floor, the French Neoclassical room he was now entering. Loud enough even to wake the dead, or just to wake _something_ …

“No drinking on the job,” a voice said, shattering the silence like broken glass. The can was plucked from his fingers, but Grantaire was not startled. He had been expecting to get caught, if he were being honest with himself. Not by the other security guard fast asleep downstairs, no. He’d been expecting to get caught by someone else.

“Hand it back, Apollo,” he said, easily taking the beer back for himself and obnoxiously taking an audible sip.

“Don’t call me that, you know it’s not my name” his chastiser replied, voice both sleepy and annoyed.

“Well, you’ve yet to tell me your real name, _mon grec_ ,” Grantaire replied, feeling more awake right now than he’d ever felt at high noon in his youth.

“I’m not Greek, I’m French,” the voice sighed, muffled under cloth.

It was true, of course.

The painting might be called _Apollo_ , but the man himself, with his fair hair and large nose, his skinny statuesque body and permanently pouted lips, was undeniably French. He had been painted at the height of the Neoclassical era, when oil on canvas looked so realistic one could imagine the figures coming out of their frames and into the real world.

Which is exactly what Apollo did every night at midnight.

Well, he didn’t come out of his frame, not really. Neither Grantaire nor his secret companion knew how the physics of it all worked, but somehow his Apollo was able to move around freely within his painted world, and converse with Grantaire in his three-dimensional one, whenever he pleased. The midnight chimes were a kind of alarm clock, waking him from his frozen slumber. He lived on Grantaire’s schedule: stretching his limbs only while the world was asleep, and leaving the sunshine to brighten everyone else’s days.

_Ironic_ , Grantaire had told him once, _that the god of the sun would prefer the shadows of the night. Not_ _Apollo_ , he had mumbled back. _Vampire then,_ Grantaire had asserted, earning him an eyeroll.

But the man really did look like Apollo. Still asleep in his permanent pose, the figure had caught Grantaire’s eye in the blue emergency lights that glowed through the galleries. It was the first time Grantaire had seen the painting, and it would be the first night they’d meet. The figure was perpetually painted upright, eyes focused upward toward the heavens. There was a hazy burst of a halo around his head, and when Grantaire asked him about it one time, Apollo had told him he was originally intended to be a saint, before his painter had changed his mind and splashed a translucent blue over the gold. In replacement, he had detailed a delicate laurel wreath on top of shimmering curls. The figure’s body was draped in a cloth which exposed more than it hid, something Grantaire liked to point out when he was in a teasing mood. The body beneath it was supple and graceful, proportions Grantaire could only dream of having himself. But there was a strength in those skinny limbs, a power behind his elongated torso.

Most spectacularly, the figure seemed to glow. In a room of shadows, that glow had caught Grantaire’s eye, transfixing him before the painting as he tried to find its source. He had stood close to the canvas, squinting, attempting to decipher its colors and determine which of them had cast that magnificent aura. But to this day he still didn’t understand it. The aura seemed to simply exist.

That had been nearly two years ago. Apollo was the first painting he saw come to life, but since then there had been a few others that had woken up, too. He’d sometimes hear the sniff of a dog’s curiosity as he passed through a room, or the sigh of a woman reclining further into her chaise. But he mostly left them alone, and they kept quiet. No, he really only cared about one painting in the museum, and that was the one hanging before him.

Apollo had taken a position on the ground, reclining on the ferns as he buried his face in the crook of his elbow. A dangerous amount of thigh was revealing itself to Grantaire, who tactfully averted his gaze.

“Still sleepy? Two hundred years of unbroken rest not enough for you?” he asked, pulling a pack of peanuts from his pocket and popping a few in his mouth.

Apollo was silent and buried his face further, looking as if he were trying to fall back asleep.

“I’d be careful about moving if I were you,” Grantaire warned. “Haven’t got too many clothes, have you?”

He’d never seen Apollo’s cheeks turn any pinker than they had been painted, but somehow he could tell a blush would have been blooming if it were possible. He looked up at Grantaire with an irritated expression as he pointedly rearranged the drapery to cover more of his body.

“You ever get cold in there?” Grantaire asked.

“Please, Grantaire, not tonight,” Apollo replied.

This happened sometimes. While often his Apollo reveled in the chance to talk to someone after centuries of sleep, his excitement would sometimes fall into a reclusive dismay. Grantaire hadn’t yet figured out what made him tick, but it was common enough for the man to prefer silence over conversation, or to sleep through the night altogether.

Grantaire watched him for a moment, curled up on the hard ground of his painting. His breathing was even, his stomach expanding with his lungs. One of his feet twitched, and a curl of hair fell over his forehead.

Of course it would be that this man, so alive on the surface and yet so impossibly unattainable, would be the man Grantaire fell in love with.

*****

“How do you feel about me creating a Wikipedia page for you?” Grantaire asked the following night. He was sprawled on the cool hardwood floors of Gallery 65, scrolling through his phone. It was just after one in the morning and the two men had been quietly amusing themselves, Grantaire with the world wide web and the other with the lyre he was finally trying to learn to play.

“What’s Wikipedia?” Apollo asked.

“Remember, that website that has all the information in the world?” Grantaire reminded him. That had been a fun night: his Apollo naming random subjects and Grantaire subsequently indulging him by reading a paragraph or two from its page.

The two of them had both been surprised to find Apollo awaken that first night nearly two years ago, and had found a common fascination in one other. They had been slow to connect, like two frightened animals who had each thought themselves the last living thing on the planet, but soon enough their nights were filled with conversation, mostly one-sided, as Grantaire enlightened his Apollo with all the information of the modern world. The excitement wore off as time went on and they’d run out of new technologies to discuss, so now the two of them found themselves like this more often than not: lounging in companionable silence, content with the simple presence of the other.

“Oh, right,” Apollo replied, sounding uninterested. “Why would you do that?”

Grantaire shrugged from the floor, out of sight.

“Lotta paintings have them. Plus, no one knows anything about you. I could ask you all kinds of questions and fill the page with stuff, and just list the source as ‘Apollo himself!’” He peeked up at the man in question, grinning as he waited for the trademark response:

“Don’t call me that.”

“Apollo, dear, you know everything about me. You know my name and my home address and my penchant for drinking on the job. You know my favorite paintings and my favorite movies and the last conversation I had with my father before he died. The least you could tell me is your name, one of these days.” Grantaire sat up, putting his phone down beside him. He considered the man before him: his back was turned, curving his body into a graceful ess, as he plucked away at the lyre’s strings. In spite of the perfect posture with which he was bestowed, his shoulders were now hunched, his head bowed. “Why do you still refuse to tell me your name?”

Apollo turned around and faced him, locking eyes with Grantaire so fiercely he couldn’t look away if he had wanted to. For a few moments he just stared like that, body still half-turned, fingers still resting on the strings. He was sitting a few feet above Grantaire’s head, and from own his vantage point on the floor, Grantaire suddenly understood the meaning behind centuries of art history. He understood the devoted drive to paint that which is holy, that which deserves to be worshipped. He saw visions of Byzantine triptychs and Egyptian carvings, Renaissance angels in oil and Baroque flesh in marble. He saw cupids and crowns and mostly he saw Apollo’s halo, that saintly symbol, glowing beneath a layer of blue glaze.

Then Apollo leaned forward, resting his elbows on the edge of his frame and dangling his arms into the cool museum air, and the moment passed. The halo faded and the laurel wreath glinted in the blue light.

“Alright. Make me a Wikipedia page,” he conceded, looking down upon Grantaire, who was surprised realize he was kneeling before the painting.

Grantaire swallowed, the air as thick as the tension around him. Apollo raised an eyebrow. His fingers were hovering dangerously close to Grantaire’s hair.

Then, the sound of footsteps lazed its way into the room. Grantaire looked at Apollo wide-eyed, finding his panic mirrored back to him. He knew from experience that the image only restored its complete painted two-dimensionality once Apollo was fully asleep – otherwise life moved through the canvas in blowing winds and rustling leaves no matter how hard Apollo tried to freeze his body.

Quickly, Apollo scrambled into position. He threw the lyre toward the corner of the frame where it normally rested and started draping himself in his fabric to the best of his ability. In his panic, though, he was getting more tangled than composed.

“Help me,” he hissed to Grantaire, as the footsteps got louder. Acting on fear and adrenaline, Grantaire caught one end of the fabric as it _swooshed_ through the air in the painting. As he felt its soft linen, he realized it was the first time he’d ever touched it.

With the two of them both standing, Apollo in his canvas and Grantaire on the gallery floor, there were a few good feet between them, making their cooperation difficult. Still, Grantaire tried tossing the fabric over Apollo’s shoulder and spreading it out to hang by his knees.

“Not like that,” Apollo growled, snatching the drapery back. His hand brushed over Grantaire’s, who felt a spark at the place their fingers had met. It wasn’t often the two of them touched, with Apollo’s limited mobility that kept him within the confines of his frame, and every time it happened Grantaire felt electricity.

Satisfied with his work, Apollo looked down at Grantaire questioningly. Grantaire nodded back at him, confirming that everything looked in order. Apollo raised his eyes to the sky and froze his body as best he could.

The footsteps were in the next room now, and Grantaire quickly walked over to enter it.

“Hey, what’s up?” he asked the other security guard, hoping his voice sounded steadier than he felt.

“Just stretching the old legs,” the young man responded. He looked beyond tired, and Grantaire wondered what someone so youthful and full of life was doing working the graveyard shift at a museum. “You gotta start waking me up when I fall asleep, man,” he said, clasping Grantaire’s hand in greeting.

“Eh, I remember when I started,” Grantaire replied. “It takes a while getting used to the hours. Hey uh,” he said, trying to sound nonchalant. “I thought we agreed you’d patrol the second floor and I’d get the third.”

The other security guard started looking around the gallery. It was Neoclassical as well, English though.

“Man, these paintings sure look creepy in this light. Too realistic for me, makes me feel like they’re actually watching me.” He started walking around the room, leaning in to inspect the work more closely. “Why, is the stuff up here better than on the second floor?” he said, acknowledging Grantaire’s question with a wink. “Leaving me with furniture and jewelry while you take the paintings?”

“Nah, man,” Grantaire said, casually leaning in the doorway that led to room 65, blocking the entry. “Just more stairs to climb.”

“You know I don’t think I’ve been up here since training day,” the young man said, and Grantaire tried to suppress a groan. The last thing he wanted right now was a casual conversation with this guy while a miraculously undead work of art tried to stay frozen in the next room. “Cool stuff.” The guard started making his way to where Grantaire stood, looking over his shoulder into the room. “What’s in here?”

And then the two of them were walking into Gallery 65 and Grantaire held his breath. To the best of his knowledge, the previous security guard never saw any moving paintings in all the time he had worked there. Toward the end of his career he mostly sat at the security desk, confident that after twenty-five years of inactivity and safety, no breaks-in would happen in the museum. It seemed like Grantaire was alone in the museum’s secret, and the thought of someone else sharing it made him squirm for some reason. Surely it would be better to have someone else know, if only to prove that he wasn’t hallucinating his nights away. But still – widening the circle of knowledge didn’t sit well with him.

“More of the same old,” he said to the security guard, trying to sound bored. “Stuffy old paintings made by stuffy old artists.” He could see the glow of his Apollo out of the corner of his eye, but refused to turn toward it, afraid to give it any attention.

“You can say that again,” the security guard replied. “I don’t know much about art, but _damn_ this stuff is boring. Rich white dudes painting pictures of other white dudes doing white people stuff. Look at this one,” he said, pointing to a picture thankfully opposite the _Apollo._ It depicted a woman reclining on a hard-backed chair, looking out with impatience. “Why is she so important she gets to be in a museum?”

“Yeah,” Grantaire shakily agreed, keeping the conversation focused on that half of the room. “I dunno. A lot of it feels hack-y. I mean, Michelangelo hated the church but he took money from them anyway. Caravaggio was a convicted murderer but everyone loved that he was a bad boy. People like to romanticize how personal art is, how the artist’s beliefs and desires and opinions are portrayed through their work. But to me it just feels like a whole lot of money being pushed around.”

The security guard stepped back and looked at him.

“Woah, man. That was deep.”

Grantaire shrugged and tucked his hands into the deep, utilitarian pockets of his work pants. He liked discussing art, that’s what attracted him to the museum in the first place. It was the only literary subject that seemed to hold his attention, really. Novels and poetry were useless to him, but an art history textbook was as easy to read as a comic book.

The security guard ambled through the room, heading for the door on the other side that led out of the gallery. Grantaire trailed him, eager to lead him around the floor until they landed back at the safety of the staircase. At the door, he turned back to give Apollo the all-good. But the man was staring resolutely upwards, jaw clenched and mouth stoic.

*****

Wednesday night found Grantaire drinking again. In fact, Wednesday found him _drunk._ It was one of his buddy’s birthdays, and a whole group of them had gone out. For them it was a regular evening at the bar, a night of partying to sleep off before a late morning at the office. For Grantaire, it was day drinking, an unfortunate way to start his shift. He couldn’t bear the thought of getting a hangover before dinner, so he’d figured he’d maintain a steady buzz just to get him through the night.

Someone else had other plans for him.

“Must I remind you again? No drinking on the job,” Apollo reprimanded, attempting to snatch away the can of beer as he had the other night. But Grantaire stood just out of reach, smugly taking a sip of the cool drink as Apollo looked on, annoyed.

“I’d offer you a sip but god knows what would happen if you spilled some on your clothes,” Grantaire replied, hating how much he loved that look of haughty disdain. His Apollo was always beautiful – that was the whole point of him. But when he was standing in a room full of idyllic beauties, smiling coyly and glancing through their lashes, Grantaire couldn’t help but prefer the wrinkled brow that appeared when Apollo was angry.

“You know I can’t eat or drink, Grantaire,” he said, placing his hands on his hips. That made the cloth rise higher on his legs, giving Grantaire a glimpse of thigh, and _god_ what he wouldn’t do to have that flimsy excuse for clothing fall to the ground completely.

“So,” Grantaire said, pulling up the chair from the corner of the room and placing it in front of the frame. “You really fall back to sleep last night or did you just not want to talk to me?” When Grantaire had made it back to the gallery he’d found Apollo just as he’d left him, frozen in place. He’d stayed for a little while, convinced he had seen breathing, but it felt too awkward waiting for Apollo to acknowledge him. So he’d left the room, heading off to Gallery 53 to watch the etching of the rabbit play.

Apollo didn’t answer the question, just hummed in response. Grantaire watched him descend in his frame, gracefully tucking his feet below him before splaying them out in front of him. His back arched concave as he slowly rolled his torso to the hard ground, one vertebra at a time. The ground was quite literally _dirty_ , as Apollo was perpetually trapped outdoors, but he didn’t seem to mind laying there, hands resting on his stomach as he stared up to the sky.

“I miss thunderstorms,” he said suddenly. It was the first time in a while that he’d offered up a new opinion of any sort, a new piece to his puzzle. Grantaire paused, lowering his can from where he had been about to drink it. Apollo was blinking up as the sunlight shined down on him. Perfect weather every single day of the year. Grantaire didn’t know what to say, but Apollo didn’t seem to be waiting for a response.

“When you were, well…” Grantaire hesitantly spoke. He didn’t want to break the spell of Apollo’s vulnerability, whatever was prompting him to share his thoughts. “Were you always so graceful? Or did that come with the painting?”

Apollo didn’t speak, just stared up at his blue sky while the sounds of birds chirping drifted through the galleries from another room. Grantaire looked down at his lap, unsure if this would be another night of silence.

“I don’t know,” Apollo whispered, unexpectedly breaking the quiet. “I’ve been in this body for so long I can’t remember what I used to be able to do. Can you remember how your body felt when you were younger?”

Grantaire paused, thinking. From anyone else it would be a rhetorical question, but Apollo was nothing but sincere, nothing but serious whenever he asked something.

He was looking at him now, head turned toward Grantaire as the rest of his body lay before him like a feast only someone else got to eat. Grantaire was used to the longing.

“I can, actually, yeah,” he replied. “At least, I can remember it back during the darker days.” If he thought about something too much, the thought only amplified. What could start as a passing fancy could grow into a full-on obsession if Grantaire found himself thinking about it too often. It was how he made a lot of his decisions, or how they were made for him: a simple suggestion could grow in his mind like a cancer, overtaking any other perspective or option until he was compelled to act in a certain way.

And for that reason, Grantaire tried not to think back on that younger self, afraid of what memory could bring. Afraid that past would turn into present.

“I remember waking up still tired, every single morning. I remember headaches and body aches and toothaches. I remember feeling nauseous almost always, feeling hungry because I couldn’t eat. But also gaining weight, and feeling like it was harder and harder to move my body through the world with each day. I remember the sharp pains I would get in my organs. I remember fear.”

The can of beer felt heavy in his hand, and he placed it down at the foot of the chair.

He sat there, lost in thought, staring at nothing, until he heard a rustling above him.

Apollo had sat up, knees tucked to his chest.

“I thought you were going to make me a Wikipedia page?” he asked gently. Grantaire saw a faint smile on that flawless face. “What do you want to know?”

Grantaire shook away his reverie and pulled out his phone, grinning as he opened the app and created a new entry.

“Well, first it’s just your biographical information. Apollo, 1815, oil on canvas. Got anything more specific than ‘workshop of David?’ Who actually painted you?” he asked, excited.

“Next question,” Apollo replied, avoiding eye contact and instead looking around his small world.

“Mysterious as always, Apollo,” Grantaire joked, making a game to see just how many days in a row he could get the man to reject that name.

But he didn’t offer his usual rebuttal. He remained silent, letting Grantaire use the nickname. Or perhaps he simply hadn’t heard.

“Okay, well,” Grantaire said, disappointed for some reason. “Why don’t you tell me more about your subject matter? Who are you actually?”

“Next question, Grantaire,” Apollo insisted, voice lower than it had been.

“You know it’s no fun if you don’t answer the questions,” Grantaire said, voice dangerously cheery.

“Ask less personal questions, then,” came the reply, irritated. But Grantaire didn’t heed the warning. He’d volleyed this conversation before, this back-and-forth, trying to weasel out information. It always ended with his Apollo sighing and moving on, and he didn’t see why tonight would be any different.

“Why were you painted?”

A pause hung suspended in the air. He was actually going to get an answer.

“Well, there are lots of things I could say for that,” Apollo replied, voice even and measured. “I could say that I was painted during the Neoclassical era, a time when there was a renewed interested in Classical imagery. I could say that Greek characters were popular subjects, and that Apollo in particular was a good choice when a model as young and boyish as me was being used. In fact, I could say that the artist saw me _as_ an Apollo, and that I was created as an act of worship. Remember my halo.” He turned to Grantaire, and suddenly Grantaire could see how hard his expression was, how angry the man looked despite his neutral tone. This was, in fact, different. “Or,” he continued, slowly unfolding his legs and crawling over to his frame, “I could say that a stuffy artist painted me just to get rich. That a wealthy patron had paid him to make a work of art that he had no interest in. That he had no choice in my design, that my imagery came from a place of greed, that all of _this_ is just a hack.”

He was right at the edge of the frame, chin jutting out from it, and his face was mere inches from Grantaire’s. His mood had shifted from his earlier discomfort to a sudden and righteous fury. A fury that was clearly pointed at Grantaire, and the opinion he had been stupid enough to let slip last night.

“So,” he replied calmly, leaning away from the face he normally wanted to be closer to. “You were listening closely, huh?”

“My name is Enjolras. My painter was a man by the name of Le Pierre. He worked with David for years, content to do his backgrounds and base coats. Then he met me. I am the first painting he ever made. I have no memories after the moment he finished me.”

And with that, the man stood up, rising above Grantaire like a god, and composed himself into his given position. Asleep or not, he had frozen up, and Grantaire knew the conversation was over.

*****

It had been one of those rare nights, or mornings in Grantaire’s case, where he had woken up only an hour before going to work. But it had also been one of those rare instances where he hadn’t immediately passed out upon getting home after his shift. Rather, he had wandered around the city, feeling like a vampire in his aversion to the sunlight, trying to clear his head.

He had gotten information. All he had wanted for the past two years was information. Even better, _he’d gotten a name._ But it hadn’t been revealed to him the way he had pictured. In fact, it had come in possibly the worst way he could imagine. Spat out, said in spite. Eyes blazing terrifying and beautiful, lips snarling around precious words.

_Enjolras. Enjolras Enjolras Enjolras._ He had repeated it in his head, trying it on like a pair of shoes. _Enjolras._ He had walked to the rhythm of its syllables, waltzing through the city as people streamed past him, starting their days. He hadn’t realized he was headed for the library until it was before him, and he was hit with a craving to know even more about the painting. He had been three steps from the entrance before he stopped suddenly, remembering the feel of that withering disdain.

No, the last thing he needed to do was push for more information, to fray a bond threatening to snap.

Still, he had lain awake in bed for hours, remembering the way _Enjolras’_ breath had felt so real when it landed on his face, the flecks of spit that had dewed his hair when he lashed out from above him. Only around noon had Grantaire succumbed to sleep.

Now he was sitting at the ticketing desk, where he’d been for the past few hours. The grandfather clock had chimed behind him, that great grand ringing, that reliable wakeup call that bounced sound through every floor and every gallery. He had kept sitting.

“Not feeling up to the stairs today?” the other security guard asked from beside him. He had already circled the main and second floors, but the third had been left unchecked.

“Oh, I’ll get around to it,” Grantaire mumbled, with no intention of getting around to it. The truth was – he was scared. Something had changed, and it wasn’t just that he’d been chastised yesterday. It wasn’t just that he’d offended the one man he’d want to hurt the least.

But his Apollo had caved. He’d been hurt, he’d been broken, and he gave up a piece of him he’d been keeping for himself. Grantaire felt guilty, sure that his clumsy hands were unable to safeguard a secret so precious.

What do you say to the man who’s unwillingly bared his soul?

“I can go up and give it a quick spin, if you want,” his partner said easily, unaware of Grantaire’s inner torment.

“No, it’s okay, I’ll do it,” he said, scraping his chair as he got up. “Second floor all good?”

“Yeah. I thought I heard like a plumbing issue, something dripping in the bathroom, but everything was clear.”

Grantaire nodded, grabbing his walkie-talkie and clipping it to his belt.

“I’ll be back,” he said.

The museum’s main staircase rivalled some of the museum’s actual works of art. It was fifteen feet wide, pure marble in each of its twenty-five shallow steps. Grantaire could ascend them with his eyes closed, which was pretty similar to ascending them under the blue emergency light as he was now.

With each step closer to the third floor, closer to Gallery 65, his heartrate leapt. He started preparing himself for different scenarios. Maybe Apollo – _Enjolras –_ would be asleep. Maybe he’d forget the previous night had even happened. Maybe he’d be waiting for Grantaire to arrive so he could throw more punishing words.

He wasn’t prepared to see fear.

Enjolras was leaning far out of his frame (and somewhere in the back of his mind Grantaire was thankful his partner hadn’t come up here to see so bold a sight), head swiveling around the gallery. His gaze landed on Grantaire and his expression was pure panic. Whatever Grantaire had been planning to say died on his lips.

“What’s wrong?” he asked quickly, rushing to the painting and placing a steadying hand on the other man’s arm. No time to relish in the touch – Enjolras pulled the arm away to point toward the other door in the gallery.

“Water,” he choked out.

Grantaire looked, and sure enough: the other security guard had been correct in his assessment of hearing a plumbing issue. He’d been wrong about the floor.

Water was leaking into the room, not quite flooding, but certainly rushing in at a worrying speed. It had only reached the far side of the gallery, but with every passing second it creeped closer and closer to the center of the room.

“I didn’t know how to tell you, I didn’t know where you were,” Enjolras babbled. All at once Grantaire saw beyond the cool sophistication Enjolras normally upheld; he saw the curse of consciousness and feet that can’t flee a frame.

“Shh, ‘sokay, I’ll fix it,” Grantaire reassured, hurrying toward the water. The puddle itself wouldn’t be a major issue, but the liquid that lingered in the air could cause devastating deterioration. Not to mention, he had a plumbing problem to fix.

A few rooms away was the bathroom, and Grantaire immediately recognized it as the source of the flood. Water was leaking under the door at an alarmingly fast rate. He called up his partner on his walkie-talkie, praying to some god he didn’t believe in that Enjolras would hear his footsteps and know to freeze up into his pose.

Inside the bathroom he kicked open the stalls until he found the culprit: a toilet ceaselessly regurgitating water. He grabbed the ring of keys from his belt and unlocked the supply closet inside the bathroom, finding a box of tools he’d never had to use before.

His partner arrived, whistling with surprise as he saw the mess they were about to clean up.

“Someone must have used it right before they left,” Grantaire explained. “Clogged, probably, and it took a while for the toilet to right itself.”

“Don’t think it really righted itself at all,” the other guard said with a laugh.

Grantaire tossed him a wrench.

“Just do what I tell you to,” he instructed.

A minute later and the two of them were crouched behind the spewing toilet, trying to keep the water out of their faces as they twisted and turned various screws and nuts. Finally, the water stopped coming up, and the bathroom was quiet.

“Damn, that sucked,” his partner said, sounding exhausted. Grantaire had to agree.

They worked methodically over the next hour, sanitizing every surface in the bathroom before moving on to the hallway and galleries. At the 65th, Grantaire put his hand on the other man’s shoulder, taking his mop from him.

“I got it from here,” he said. “There’s just this one room left, why don’t you head back downstairs.”

“You sure?” his partner asked.

“Yeah, go ahead.” He sighed as he watched the other man amble away, then sent a text to the head of security that he knew wouldn’t be read for another few hours. This night hated him for some reason, and it was still long from over.

He walked back into the _Apollo_ gallery and rested the mop inside the doorframe. Enjolras was still posing, unaware he was now free to move, and Grantaire took a moment to admire him. For the first time he saw someone beneath that veneer. He knew he was no longer looking at a Greek god, but a real person, a young man who, for some period of time in 1815, had modelled for an artist and been immortalized forever. How much of the painting was accurate? How much of it was artistic license? Had Enjolras’ curls really glowed like that under French skies? Had he been as tall and lean and free of blemishes or scars? A door had been opened into a secret world and Grantaire longed to enter it.

“It’s just me,” he said softly into the still room. Enjolras looked toward him with just his eyes, then relaxed when he realized the two of them were alone. He collapsed to the bottom of the frame, resting his elbows on the gold and his head in his hands.

“God, that was awful,” he mumbled. “I saw the water start to come in and I didn’t know how to call you. I was so scared.”

Grantaire awkwardly patted his forearm, not daring to touch his hair. It seemed to bring some strength back into Enjolras, who sniffed and sat up straighter. He looked up at Grantaire, who was standing before him, and the two of them considered each other. Grantaire couldn’t attest to the expression splashed across his own face, but Enjolras looked sorrowful, his unchanging eyes appearing bigger somehow than they normally did.

“Hey, um,” Grantaire started. He looked away, unable to do this under the pressure of that captivating gaze. “I know you hate when I, uh, call you Apollo. So, um, do you… do you want me to call you by your real name?”

Enjolras was silent, and Grantaire couldn’t help but look back at him to gauge his reaction. He hadn’t moved, and for a moment Grantaire was afraid he’d made the whole situation worse.

But then Enjolras offered him a soft smile.

“Yeah, I think that would be nice. It’s been so long since I’ve heard anyone use it, but… I think I miss it. I think I’m ready to be myself again.”

“And who exactly is that, _Enjolras_?” Grantaire asked. The other man’s eyes widened slightly when he heard the name, and then he let out the closest thing to a giggle Grantaire had ever heard come from him.

“I like the way you say my name,” he confessed, and Grantaire once again found himself kneeling before the painting, unaware of how it had happened. Their faces were so close, Enjolras still lazily leaning on the bottom of the frame. “Say it again?”

Grantaire indulged him.

“Enjolras,” he breathed out like a prayer.

“Again?”

“Enjolras.” It was bordering on pornographic.

But Enjolras didn’t seem to notice. He kept smiling in that dopey way, lost in centuries of memory. Then he schooled his features and leaned back a little, shaking himself from the moment.

“Surely you know who I am by now,” he said, voice serious again. “I told you my name. I told you my maker. No doubt you’ve researched everything there is to know about me for your little Wikipedia page.”

“I wanted to,” Grantaire admitted, “but I stopped myself. I don’t want to know the man the history books say you are. I want to know the man you actually are.”

Enjolras looked at him quizzically, tentatively leaning back into the cool museum air. He was hooked, and Grantaire knew now was his only chance to get out the words he’d been meaning to say since the previous night.

“I’m sorry, you know,” he confessed. “About what I said that night. And what I implied. I thought I knew you. I thought you were some model posing in a phony picture. I didn’t realize this was your first painting, or that you knew the artist personally. It shouldn’t matter, I guess. I shouldn’t have said any of it at all. I mean it, you know. I really do want to get to know the real you.” Enjolras’ face was so close to his, so void of pretense and composition. It was open and inviting and a blank canvas full of the possibility of personality, a true authentic personality, not one painted on for him. “I like you a lot. I like the way you let me ramble every night, the way you make me feel listened to. I like the way you’re determined to try new things, like the lyre. Cause you’re smart, I mean _so_ smart, Enjolras. You’ve learned so many modern words, and understood technologies you’d probably never dreamed of. I mean, it only took what, three days to teach you about the internet?” Enjolras laughed but his eyes didn’t lose any of their earnestness. In fact, they appeared to be misting up. “I never meant to hurt your feelings,” Grantaire continued. “I never want to ever again—”

And then lips were pressing against his.

They were cool, a few degrees lower than Grantaire was used to feeling, but they were firm and insistent beneath his own. And they were kissing him, _god,_ Enjolras was _kissing him!_

Grantaire’s body caught up with his brain and then he was kissing back, coaxing Enjolras’ lips to part as he leaned in closer to the other man. A hand tangled in his hair and he threaded his own through those curls he’d been dying to touch for two years. They felt like pure silk, the finest texture Grantaire had ever touched.

Enjolras’ breath was warm in his mouth, so real and so alive. Grantaire let out a whimper, needing more of their skin to be touching.

But then Enjolras pulled away, turning his face from the museum. Grantaire’s head hung suspended in the air, and he didn’t move for fear of doing something wrong. But as he looked closer, Enjolras didn’t look upset or disgusted or anything else Grantaire was expecting to see. Rather, he looked embarrassed.

“Enjolras?” Grantaire questioned softly. Bright eyes met his, then averted their gaze.

“Sorry, I don’t know why I did that,” Enjolras said. Grantaire felt his heart sink. He leaned away from the frame, resting back on his heels as he waited for Enjolras to say more. “I – thank you, for the apology.”

“Anytime,” Grantaire mumbled, unsure of where to look. The room was deathly silent.

Enjolras shuffled a little deeper into his frame, still looking away.

“It’s just been two hundred years since I’ve kissed anyone,” he admitted.

Grantaire froze, completely unequipped to deal with the emotional whiplash he’d experienced all night. From dread to panic to concern to lust, and now Enjolras was hitting him with another nostalgic confession.

A strangled noise escaped from Enjolras’ lips, and at first Grantaire was terrified it was a sob. But he realized – Enjolras was _laughing._ It was a beautiful sound, and it was contagious. Soon the gallery was filled with the sound of their shared laughter, and Grantaire felt the tension ease up a little.

“Well, I hope it was a good one, then,” he joked, ignoring the tightness still pressing on his chest.

“Yeah, it was,” Enjolras said, giving him a wry smile. “Sorry for springing that on you.”

The tightness squeezed a little harder, but Grantaire forced out a smile of his own.

“No worries,” he said. Golden sunshine was streaming down on Enjolras’ statuesque form, bright even in the dim lights of the museum. His heart beat painfully.

“I think you’ve still got a bit of a mess to clean up,” Enjolras reminded, changing the subject as he looked pointedly over to where Grantaire had left his mop at the door. Grantaire groaned, loving the way his annoyance made Enjolras giggle again.

He stretched out his joints as he stood up, then started making his way across the gallery toward the thin layer of water still puddled on the floor. He paused, turning back to the painting. Enjolras was leaning back over the frame, leisurely watching Grantaire’s movements.

“I’ve got an idea, by the way,” Grantaire said. Enjolras’ eyebrows perked up. “For what to do the next time you need me.”

*****

_This work has been temporarily removed for conservation purposes. It will return to the gallery shortly._

“’Sup, man,” Grantaire said, clocking in to his shift Friday night. He was jittering with excitement, eager to introduce Enjolras to his new plan.

“Not much. Wish I could say TGIF but we got that damned Saturday shift,” the other guard responded. He was slumped over the security desk playing a game on his phone, and Grantaire figured he wouldn’t last more than an hour or so before he dozed off. All the better: he expected a long night ahead of him teaching Enjolras new skills.

Normally he waited to start his rounds until after the grandfather clock chimed, but tonight he wouldn’t mind being early, catching Enjolras right as he woke up.

He started for the stairs.

“Damn, getting started already?” the guard asked.

“Don’t want a repeat of yesterday,” Grantaire lied easily.

“True,” the guard conceded.

Grantaire raced up the main staircase to the second floor, then took one of the smaller ones on the side of the building up to the third. He thew cursory glances into each of the galleries, then quickly made for 65, prepared to sit and wait until midnight.

Then he saw the small sign hanging where _Apollo_ normally did.

He groaned.

The painting hadn’t even gotten wet! Surely the conservators could have given it a quick glance and realized that it was fine.

He slumped into the chair in the corner of the room, staring glumly at that sign. Forget about his plan – he was now more concerned that a night apart from each other would erase the progress they had made in their relationship.

The rest of the previous night had passed by easily. Enjolras said no more about their unexpected kiss, and Grantaire pretended it hadn’t happened. After he finished mopping up the small mess by the doorway he returned to the frame, pulling a nutrition bar out of his pocket as he flopped casually on the floor.

“So, Enjolras: painted 1815. Born…?” he had asked, half-expecting another avoidance of the question.

But Enjolras had surprised him, answering without hesitation.

“Born 1788. Right before the Revolution.”

“Hey, you look pretty good for 230,” Grantaire had joked. He was rewarded with a blinding smile and fond eyeroll. “A modern-day Dorian Gray.” Enjolras’ eyebrows knitted together in confusion and Grantaire waved the thought away with his hand. “A book. Maybe I’ll read it to you one day.”

Grantaire had been careful to avoid any questions about the artist, Le Pierre, or the circumstances of Enjolras’ immortalization. It was too soon after their argument, too soon after Enjolras had begun to trust him. Instead, he had asked about Enjolras’ childhood.

The memories were foggy, but every small glimpse into that foreign world was like found treasure to Grantaire. Enjolras had told him a story about a public execution, watching the blade of the guillotine swing down in the city center, and the small gasp his mother let out as she squeezed his small hand to the point of pain. He told Grantaire about their trip to the countryside, and how an unfortunate bout of rain had clogged the spokes of the carriage wheels, and how they’d been forced to walk the last three miles. He talked about the confusion of living under a government that shifted as easily as the seasons, and the delight he’d felt the first time he walked into a library and saw all those rows of books, a world of knowledge at his fingertips.

But his answers had come less and less easily, and Grantaire had seen sharing his story for the first time in so long was causing him pain. Soon enough, he had let the conversation run back to familiar territory: Grantaire monologuing while Enjolras listened.

He told him about his friends and their own passion for politics. _You would like them,_ he had said. _It sounds like I would,_ Enjolras had agreed. He talked about his mother, and how he gave her so much reason to worry. He told him a story from university, about a time when Grantaire had been locked out on the roof in the middle of winter. He talked about a particularly nasty stint in the hospital, and a stupidly fun theme party he threw for his last birthday. He had talked about nothing and everything, baring his soul to Enjolras as he had most nights for almost two years.

But that wouldn’t happen tonight, apparently. The loud ringing of the grandfather clock woke him from his reverie, and as his eyes focused he saw that glaringly empty wall and that small little notice. He wondered if Enjolras would be scared when he woke up in the conservation room, if he’d have any idea where he was. Maybe there was another painting stored there that would wake up, too, and could offer him some comfort. Or maybe Enjolras would magically just know what had happened – or maybe he’d woken up during the transition from all of the jostling, forced to remain still as his frame was tilted and turned.

For now, all Grantaire could do was hypothesize. The conservation room – heavily alarmed and constantly buzzing and beeping with all kinds of humidity and air pressure monitors – was strictly off-limits to non-conservators, including security guards.

Grantaire got up from the chair, figuring there was no point staying in the gallery, and smiled to himself. Maybe Enjolras could tell him about his little field trip when he got back.

*****

Grantaire was pleasantly surprised the following night to find Gallery 65 restored to its normal glory, _Apollo_ and all. It was just before 1am, but Enjolras was still nestled on the ground, eyes closed and breathing slow. Grantaire knew he wasn’t actually asleep, or he’d be frozen in his painting, but it was still unusual to see Enjolras so tired at this hour.

“Hey, sleepyhead,” Grantaire said softly, leaning on the wall next to the painting. Enjolras didn’t stir. “Enjolras?” Still nothing. Grantaire sighed, looking around for inspiration of some way to rouse the other man. If he were a better person he’d let him sleep, but Grantaire was too selfish to entertain that possibility. “Apollo?”

“Don’t call me that.”

The words were mumbled and Enjolras’ eyes were still closed, but Grantaire cracked a smile.

“You want me to leave you alone?” Grantaire asked, praying the answer would be _no._

Enjolras rolled over onto his back, and the drapery on his body fell open, revealing his toned chest, glimmering in the sunshine. He sighed softly, running his fingers gently over his stomach.

“No, no, I’m up,” Enjolras replied, clearly not up. “Weird day yesterday.”

“I’ll bet,” Grantaire said. “How was the conservation room?”

Enjolras slowly sat upright, movements far too graceful for his zombie-like consciousness. He seemed to only just notice how undressed he was, and quickly rearranged the fabric around his body to allow more modesty.

“Invasive. I’m not used to people touching me,” he said. His eyes betrayed him, darting toward Grantaire’s lips, and Grantaire blushed.

“Well, you’re safe now,” Grantaire said, refusing to read into the moment.

“Sorry I couldn’t give you any new information for your Wikipedia page yesterday,” Enjolras said.

“Oh. Oh, um. Actually… well I haven’t actually been editing it,” Grantaire admitted, looking away from those prying eyes. “I figured you’d, uh, you’d want that stuff private. You know, your whole life story.”

The room was quiet, and Grantaire slowly looked back to Enjolras. His expression was unreadable as he just stared out at Grantaire, not moving. Grantaire coughed and scratched the back of his neck, unsure of what to say next.

“Thank you,” Enjolras said finally. “That was very thoughtful.”

“Yeah, uh, no problem,” Grantaire said awkwardly, blush only growing. He gave Enjolras a small smile, then wandered away from the painting, feeling uncomfortable standing there in silence. He pretended to look over the other works, but he could feel Enjolras’ gaze on his back. He tried appraising one of the canvases.

“This one’s not bad—”

“I met Le Pierre by chance,” Enjolras interrupted. Grantaire swiveled around and saw him leaning back on the corner of the frame, lost in thought. Grantaire took a step forward, and Enjolras looked up at him. His eyes were so old. “1813, and I had just finished my studies. I was going to be a lawyer. I went to market as I always did, to buy food for the week.”

Grantaire could picture it all as Enjolras described it, like a painting coming together stroke by stroke. He saw the bustling square, felt the chill of the winter breeze as it passed through Enjolras’ curls. The cobbled streets below his feet were dirty and the air was thick with the smell of animals, freshly slaughtered. The stalls were all lined up: the butcher, the baker, the fisherman. The jeweler and the tailor, the blacksmith and –

“But that day I went to the stalls where the artists did their shopping. I wanted to buy fresh ink as a gift to myself, a symbol of the good work I was about to do. Those stalls were usually full of young boys, sent out on errands by their masters. And that’s when I saw him. He was an apprentice of David, that renowned painter, and he was purchasing new pigments. I still remember those two jars, one red and one black.”

Grantaire moved to sit quietly in front of the painting, looking up at Enjolras as he told his story.

“He was handsome. I saw that right away. His hands were rough and calloused, worker’s hands. But they suited him. Everything suited him. His messy black curls, wild and free. His big nose, full of character. A thick build, strong and sturdy. Perhaps to someone else he’d look like anybody else. But to me – I don’t know. He was the sum of his parts. He looked lively and worldly and… and safe.” Enjolras glanced at Grantaire from the corner of his eye, and smiled wryly. “He looked a little bit like you.”

And now was certainly not the time to tell Enjolras that his own dark hair got curly when it grew out. But he couldn’t help it – he could picture the two of them in that market square, catching each other’s eye for the first time. A different life, a different world.

“Anyway, he asked me about the ink I was purchasing, offering advice. Later he told me it was just an excuse to talk to me.” Enjolras smiled to himself at the memory. “I gave him the address of my new office, and he visited me the next day. Told me about life as an artist, about working with David. He was endlessly charming – he would talk and talk and talk and it was never boring. I’d just sit there and listen, let him talk about whatever passed through that brilliant mind.

“A few weeks after we first met he took me to the workshop. All of the apprentices and models were hosting a soirée, and he wanted me to meet his friends. He told me we’d be safe, and it was there, nestled between canvases and cloaked in the smell of turpentine and linseed oil, that we first kissed.”

Grantaire could cry with the romance of it all. He’d never seen Enjolras cry, wasn’t even sure if he could, but he could hear the man’s voice cracking under the emotion he hadn’t felt in so long.

“We became lovers. In secret, of course, but it was paradise nonetheless. We’d talk about politics and France and all the changes we wanted to see in the world. He’d sketch our visions of democracy, I’d write manifestos of our future. But mostly we just – _were._ I could pass months lying in his bed, letting him talk, and never get bored.

“Two years later, and David told him it was time to become his own artist, that he had finished his apprenticeship. He gave him a canvas and paint and told him he could create anything, as long as it was good. Le Pierre didn’t even hesitate. I didn’t resist. He was going to paint a saint, with the hopes that a church would purchase it. I would be his model.

“But David hated it. _That’s not what I taught you,_ he had said. Painting wasn’t about the money. It was personal. It was about conveying an idea. _Tell a story if you want,_ he advised, _but make sure it’s one you care about._ So I became a god.

“Le Pierre saw me as Apollo. Shining, brilliant, golden. But vengeful, full of wrath. He saw all of me, the good and the bad. And he worshipped me the only way he knew how: through paint. Four months, he spent, posing me under soft light and capturing my every detail. I told him he was exaggerating, that I wasn’t that beautiful, certainly not that tall. _Nonsense, mon coeur. To me, you are the tallest man on Earth._ And I knew what he meant – in love, we saw each other as better than we were.

“Four months, and then he declared me complete. David found him a frame and he secured my canvas in it. I have no memory after that moment.”

Enjolras finished his story, and Grantaire slowly opened his eyes. The sound of paintbrushes dancing over canvas faded to the hum of the air conditioner, and the natural light streaming through the windows of the artist’s studio dimmed into familiar emergency-blue.

The two of them remained silent for the next several hours. Enjolras kept himself idle plucking at the grass below his feet, while Grantaire surveyed the other paintings in the room.

There was nothing to say, and they both knew it. It was a time for quiet, not chatter.

The grandfather clock rang out its haunting melody, signaling that dawn was breaking. Enjolras yawned, and turned to Grantaire.

“Yesterday, you said you knew a way I could talk to you even if you weren’t here?” he questioned. Of course, Grantaire had almost forgotten!

“Right, right,” he said hurriedly, reaching into his pocket. “Here.”

He offered his hand, on which rested an old mp3 player. It was dinged around the edges and the screen was covered in scratches, but Grantaire knew it worked just fine. Enjolras reached out and took it, turning it over in his hands, confused.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“That,” Grantaire said, “is a music player. Touch screen, 64 gigs. It’s nice.”

“And this will help me how?”

“Well, it’s also able to connect to wi-fi. Internet. So,” Grantaire said, taking back the device and entering the museum’s wi-fi password, “you can send me messages with this thing, and I can get them on my phone.”

Enjolras gingerly examined the player, touching different icons and watching with fascination as different apps opened.

“You have no idea how lucky you have it,” he deadpanned.

“Oh trust me,” Grantaire disagreed. “I know.”

He walked Enjolras through the settings and showed him how to type out a message. _Do you know how to spell?_ he asked, which was answered with a disgruntled _I’m a lawyer._ He set up an account on a messaging app and had Enjolras send him something as a test. His phone buzzed and a _Hi_ greeted him on his lock screen.

“Good work, Apollo,” he said with a grin. He kept talking over Enjolras’ rote response. “Now get some sleep, ‘kay?” He reached his hand out, and when Enjolras didn’t lean away, he ran it through that soft blonde hair. Enjolras leaned into the touch, pressing his nose against Grantaire’s wrist.

“Wait,” he said, eyes flying open. “What am I supposed to do with this once you leave?”

“What do you mean?” Grantaire asked, stepping back.

“Where am I supposed to keep this?”

“Hide it somewhere, in the grass,” Grantaire suggested.

“Will that work?” Enjolras wondered, already looking for a safe place.

“I don’t know. But I’ll stay here until you fall asleep, if you want,” Grantaire murmured. “And if something weird happens I’ll find a way to wake you up and fix it. Okay?”

Enjolras nodded and tucked the device behind the old Doric column at the back of the painting.

“Thank you,” he said, “for everything.”

He didn’t elaborate but Grantaire knew what he meant.

“Go to sleep, and I’ll see you on Monday,” Grantaire promised.

He pulled up the chair and sat there, watching Enjolras blink slowly at him until his lids closed for the night. The life faded from the painting, leaving Grantaire sitting before a two-dimensional plane of oil and canvas. He stood up, head only coming to the Apollo’s chest, and looked up into those now-open, lifeless eyes, staring up forever to the heavens. And he wondered if maybe in another life, in a bubble universe with its alternate timeline, the two of them had found each other in a marketplace on a cold winter morning, finding the beauty in each other’s ordinary faces.

*****

When he first started the job, Sunday had been his favorite day of the week. He would wake up early, around one or two in the afternoon, and spend the day in public spaces. Farmers markets, libraries, grocery stores, boutiques. Furnitures stores, bookshops, gardens, parks. Anywhere he could find crowds of people, he’d flock there. Sometimes he’d just sit on the fringes of life, sketching passerby or inventing stories about the people he saw passing on trains and in cars. Other times he’d meet up with a friend, eating away the hours with laughter and conversation. Still others he’d try to talk to as many strangers as possible, tallying up the new people he met.

He’d been a social butterfly in his youth, in those days when alcohol loosened more than his tongue and his regular access to drugs gave people a reason to stay in touch with him. But as he matured he had refined that extroverted nature into less of a loose canon and more of a silly charm.

Lately, though, Sundays were his least favorite days. He’d come to rely on routine to keep his bad habits in check, and he missed the reliable presence of his favorite person to talk to. The museum had a special rotation of Sunday crew staff, since it was closed to visitors all day. Grantaire had asked Enjolras once if he ever talked to the Sunday guards, and he’d replied that he’d never been awake to see them. That was probably over a year ago, though, so the curiosity came back, this time with a stinging jealousy.

The day bled into Monday, with a healthy ten hours of sleep somewhere in between, and Grantaire woke up late Monday afternoon to a message he’d received while he was sleeping. _I hope this works,_ it said. Grantaire smiled. _You did it!_ he sent back.

He dressed, reveling in the comfort of his freshly-laundered uniform. Then he packed up a small backpack, with the two books he’d checked out from the library the day before. As he walked to the door of his apartment he passed a mirror, catching his reflection in the corner of his eye. Normally he didn’t care much about his appearance. Not that he didn’t want to look good – he was just so used to wearing the same thing each day, styling his hair the same way. This time, though, he paused, and studied the face staring back at him.

He was no Apollo, that was sure. His face was uneven, abrupt and angular. His eyes looked wild, his nose too big for his face. Perhaps he’d serve as a good model for maniacal monarch, certainly not a god. But then he remembered Enjolras’ words, his insistence that he was not as beautiful as he was painted to be. He wondered what his own face looked like, outside the painting his eyes made in the mirror.

The museum was predictably dark when he approached it. From the outside it was a looming, ugly block of industrial design. An architect trying to make a statement, no doubt, but Grantaire would have preferred the grandeur he found upon entering the building.

“What’s in the bag?” the other security guard asked once he’d made it to their shared desk.

“How are you always here before me?” Grantaire asked in reply. The guard shrugged.

“Haven’t gotten used to the schedule, still.”

Grantaire clocked in and shrugged off his jacket, making a cup of coffee from the pot in the break room. The guard raised an eyebrow.

“Coffee? Since when?”

“Trying to make new habits, I guess,” Grantaire answered, feeling the warmth spread through his body. He missed the fizz and bubbles that normally greeted his mouth at this hour, but he definitely didn’t miss the acidic taste.

He wandered into the doorway, where he could see the grandiose grandfather clock standing proudly behind the ticketing desk. The clockmaker probably built it thinking it would only live a few decades, maybe a century or so at most. They probably could never have even imagined the 21st century, with cars and telephones and streaming services. And yet here the creation was, as bold and beautiful as it had been in the 1500s, where it had spent its years in the house of a wealthy merchant or gilded town hall. _That’s the beauty of museums,_ Grantaire thought. _Life persists._

“Hey, what’s your opinion on that clock?” he called back to his partner.

“Loud old thing,” he replied. “Could wake the dead.”

“I wonder how many people jump out of their bones when they hear it during the day,” he mused, trying to picture the lobby full of visitors.

“Oh, it’s way less loud. The bodies absorb the sound and it’s actually pretty pleasant,” the guard explained. Grantaire turned around, facing him.

“You’ve been here during opening hours?” he asked.

“Yeah. You haven’t?”

Grantaire shook his head.

Later, when those great chimes rang out and his partner asked him where he thought the sound of the dog barking was coming from, Grantaire grabbed his backpack from under the desk and made his way to the third floor.

He stepped into Gallery 65, conspicuously taking a sip from his coffee, and was unsurprised to find it snatched from his hand, liquid sloshing.

“No drinking on the – oh. Is this coffee?”

Enjolras looked wide awake, hair neat and drapes elegantly assembled.

“It is, and if you don’t mind, I’d like it back,” Grantaire said, fingers brushing Enjolras’ as they wrapped around the porcelain mug.

“That’s new.”

“Yes.”

It was amazing how much Grantaire could miss that face in a single day. Those sloping shoulders and pointed elbows, skinny calves and narrow hips. He drank it all in, past the point of embarrassment in his appraisal. When he looked back to those eyes he found himself being similarly examined, and tried not to read any meaning behind it.

“Got your message,” he said, waggling his phone in the air. Enjolras preened under the approval.

“How was your Sunday?” he asked, draping himself over the edge of the frame. He nodded toward the chair in the corner of the room, inviting Grantaire to sit with him.

“It was good,” Grantaire replied as he pulled it over. “I went to the library.”

“Oh? Find anything good?”

“Actually,” Grantaire said slowly. Enjolras looked content and agreeable, and Grantaire didn’t know if that meant he’d be more receptive to the news, or if he should avoid ruining his good mood. “I went to look for something. There. In the library.”

“Do tell.”

Grantaire unzipped his backpack and pulled out the two books. Enjolras squinted, trying to read their titles, but the light was too dim and the covers were angled away from him.

“I haven’t read them yet. Haven’t even opened them,” Grantaire said, holding the books up so Enjolras could see what they were. He carefully gauged his reaction, watching his curious smile thin into a flat line.

“What is that?” Enjolras asked, voice apprehensive and eyes clouding over like a storm.

“I thought, if you wanted to, and _only_ if you wanted to, we could read them together. Here. For the first time.”

Enjolras was staring at the books as if they were weapons, or maybe as if they were enemies. Tentatively, he reached out.

“May I?” he asked, taking hold of the one on the left.

“Of course,” Grantaire said, handing it over.

Grantaire had been lucky to find it. It had taken up almost two hours of the librarian’s time to find the two volumes, obscure as they were. In his hand Enjolras was holding _Jacques-Louis David: The Workshop._ He traced his fingers over the image on the cover, a copy of _Death of Marat,_ then flipped it over to read the back. His eyes widened and Grantaire knew what had caused the reaction.

It was a biography, the only one on the subject, of the artists who had worked under David’s apprenticeship in the beginning of the 19th century. The summary claimed to detail how they had met the artist, their working relationships with him, and how the paths of their lives continued in the wake of his perishing. Inside its covers, the book no doubt held the history of one particular painter, his life and loves and accomplishments and death.

Enjolras reached for the other one, confusion spreading on his face when he read the title.

“It happened after you were painted, in the 1830s,” Grantaire explained, watching Enjolras smooth a thumb over the cover image of the tricolor flag. “The librarian said your name was only mentioned in it once, but it was the only place she could find it at all. I think… I think it’s an obituary.”

Enjolras’ head snapped up at that, and his expression was more wild than Grantaire had ever seen.

“I don’t know what’s inside of them,” Grantaire continued cautiously. “But I think if you wanted to know more about your life, you’d find the answers in there.”

Time seemed to stand still, and for all Grantaire knew, for all the miraculous things he’d seen in the past two years, it actually _was_. Enjolras cracked open the spine on the biography, gasping as he took in the table of contents. Grantaire watched him closely, watched the way his nostrils flared at the smell of the old book wafting into the air, and the way he rubbed his fingers together absentmindedly, shedding them of dust. Watched the quiver in his lower lip and the shine in his eyes.

But Enjolras didn’t turn the page. He just gazed down at the table of contents, lost in thought and memory and sadness and hope and desperation and longing and joy. And then he closed the book, a gentle _swish_ slicing through the air. He put it down at his feet, next to the account of some rebellion Grantaire wasn’t familiar with. He looked up, and all Grantaire could see was unadulterated beauty.

“Come here,” Enjolras whispered, and Grantaire was helpless but to obey.

They leaned forward in tandem, moving as one, reaching for each other, until their faces met at their mouths.

It felt so natural, kissing him, like he’d been doing it for years and years. Like Enjolras’ lips had been painted just to fit his own so perfectly, his nose slotting seamlessly against his cheek.

Grantaire was breathless and desperate, kissing Enjolras like he was his only source of power, only source of nourishment and vitality. And Enjolras was kissing him back the same way. His hand was tugging his short curls, and Grantaire internally promised he’d never get a haircut again. Enjolras licked at his lips and Grantaire was opening his mouth under that curious tongue, happy to give Enjolras whatever he wanted.

As he leaned deeper, wanting to get closer, Grantaire felt a soft warmth on his face, and when he opened his eyes he realized Enjolras’ eternal sun was shining down on him as well. Enjolras opened his eyes and giggled, running a thumb across Grantaire’s cheek.

“Your eyes look beautiful in this light,” he whispered.

“Yeah?” Grantaire asked, delirious with pleasure.

“Yes.”

And then they were kissing again, and again, and again. It felt like they were kissing for hours, but Grantaire didn’t mind one bit. Finally, when their need for air outweighed their need for each other, the two men split apart, resting their foreheads against each other.

“These books are wonderful, Grantaire,” Enjolras said, his hand still lingering on the nape of Grantaire’s neck. “But… I don’t want them. I don’t want to know what happened to me. Because for you it’s the past, but for me… it’s still my future. And, and I don’t want whatever future is there in those books. That’s not mine. I want this future, right here, in this brand-new and brilliant century. With your clothes I don’t understand and your movies I probably wouldn’t like, and the stories of your friends that I wish I could meet.” He kissed Grantaire softly, chastely. “In those books I have one ending, one set of decisions that I made. Here, now, today, I have a million possibilities, a million ways my story could go. And I’d rather have that.”

Grantaire nodded, surprised to find his face damp with tears.

“Yeah,” he whispered. “Yeah, that sounds nice.”

Enjolras laughed, wiping the tears away.

“Thank you, though, as always. For everything, as always.”

He handed the books back and Grantaire accepted them, tucking them into his backpack. He’d keep them there until Sunday, when he could return them unread, secrets untold.

“You know,” he said, steadying his voice, “I think if you saw one, you might find you actually _would_ like the movies I like.”

Enjolras laughed, appreciating the lighter topic, and curled his knees to his chest, tucking his chin.

“Maybe. Guess I’ll never find out, though.”

“Oh yeah? Says who? I’ll bring my laptop to work tomorrow and we’ll have our first movie night,” Grantaire said. Enjolras smiled, looking dopey and still so lovely. “And maybe, one day, if I ever build up the courage and the conviction that this isn’t all a dream, I could call up one of my friends and they could meet you over a video call.”

“I’d like that,” Enjolras said. “I’m not sure how they’d take it, though. They’d probably think you somehow mastered the art of puppeteering during your long, boring shifts at work.”

“Maybe I did,” Grantaire replied. “Maybe you’re not real.”

“Does this feel real to you?” Enjolras pulled Grantaire closer by the back of his neck, crashing their lips together again.

“It does, actually, thank you for the reminder,” Grantaire said cheekily.

“Have any of them seen me during the day?” Enjolras asked.

“I don’t know actually,” Grantaire mused. “I know I haven’t.”

“What?” Enjolras pulled back, shock written all over his face. “You’ve never visited during open hours?”

“Is that bad?” Grantaire asked. “I mean, I’ve seen every painting and sculpture in this place eight times over already. You’ve certainly gotten more than your fair share of attention,” he quipped.

“Visit me during the day, sometime,” Enjolras insisted. “I’d really like that.”

“You won’t even know I’m here,” Grantaire countered.

“Still. I want you to see me in my best light. How I’m meant to be seen.”

“You’re meant to be seen right here: up close, under blue light, and through my eyes.”

And Grantaire was convinced he was right. He had a seen an ordinary face, dim in the night, and found nothing but beauty reflected back at him.

They spent the rest of the night languishing in each other’s company, alternating between kisses and laughter, caresses and stories. Grantaire popped downstairs from time to time, just to avoid suspicion, but Enjolras was eagerly waiting for him each time he returned to the gallery.

Dawn was beginning to break through the shaded windows, and the six o’clock chime had rung out twenty minutes ago. It was time to part for the day.

“Visit me sometime, Grantaire. I’m serious,” Enjolras said, rearranging his laurel wreath that had been abandoned at some point in the night.

“Maybe I will,” Grantaire demurred. He took Enjolras’ hand, kissing it, then let it fall back behind the frame. Enjolras gave a sleepy sigh, then settled into his pose.

*****

“Hi, uh, do you have an employee discount?”

As much as Grantaire hated to admit it, Enjolras was right: the museum was quite lovely in the daytime. The statues that populated the main lobby shimmered in the sunlight, specks of granite shining like diamonds. The high ceilings gave the atmosphere of a cathedral, a place to be reverent in your worship.

The people he could do without.

“Are you an employee of the museum?” the woman behind the ticket desk asked. She looked skeptical, wary that this sleep-deprived and very rumpled man had actually been hired by her hallowed institution. To be fair, Grantaire had stayed up through the morning, wandering around the block after clocking out and waiting for the museum to open. He’d been awake for almost eighteen hours.

“Yes ma’am,” he said, trying to sound cheerier than he felt. He held up his security badge, displaying a photo that was far more pleasant than his current mug.

The woman printed out a ticket free of charge and offered him a map, which he refused with a chuckle. He walked past the grandfather clock, giving it a salute, and presented his ticket to the clerk. He made way for the staircase before figuring _why not,_ might as well give a spin through each of the floors, if only out of respect to the other works.

The furniture rooms were lively, realistic lighting displaying how they might have looked in an old English parlor. The impressionism was divine, an imitation of the _plein air_ weather the artists might have enjoyed back in the day. He didn’t expect the music that played in the Renaissance galleries, and he adored the way the light bounced off the gold leaf in the old Byzantine woodworks.

But even the glittering crown jewels, and the translucent glassworks, couldn’t keep him away from the third floor for too long.

The crowd was thinner up here. A shame, in Grantaire’s opinion. He walked through the rooms of Dutch realism and Spanish still lives, a route he knew by heart. Gallery 65 glowed like the light at the end of the tunnel before him.

The color of the walls surprised him. Under the blue light he had always thought them brown, but in the overhead incandescents he could now see they were a rich crimson, the color of dried blood. It was fitting, an elegant backdrop for such dignified works. The black dress of the woman in mourning seemed more noble, the glint of the silver in the soldier’s sword shined. He held his breath, and turned toward the wall so singular in his mind.

_Apollo, 1815, workshop of Jacques-Louis David._

It was spectacular.

Enjolras looked like a rightful god, an icon whose sole purpose was to be worshipped. The wall surrounding the gold frame was darkened, and a spotlight glowed a yellow halo around the work. The paint seemed to elevate from the canvas, seemed to hover in the air like something tangible. The sheen of the glaze amplified the bright colors of the oils, and each shade blended harmoniously with the others, creating an illusion of lifelike perfection.

One man, one wild artist with too much passion and not enough practicality, saw this figure and chose to dedicate his whole self to him. Had chose to paint him, brushstroke after careful brushstroke, had chose to immortalize him so his precious soul could live on long after their bodies had decayed from the earth. Had given him a gift he couldn’t give to himself.

Had loved him.

Grantaire would never meet that artist, would never shake his hand, would never get the opportunity to thank him for that divine act of love, and yet he felt that somehow, somewhere in the universe, the painter had understood. The painter had left that love in the universe for Grantaire to find.

He looked up at Enjolras’ eyes, and he could no longer see the Apollo. The laurel wreath was just a prop, the lyre an instrument he knew the other man couldn’t play. Beneath the veneer, he saw only Enjolras. And he loved him.

And then, so quick he would have thought he’d imagined it if he hadn’t known any better – Enjolras met his gaze, looking down at him, and smiled.


End file.
